Take Me in the Dark (Take Me #2) Read online

  Tommy pretended to smooth down his nonexistent shirt. I swallowed. Even from my seat off to the side, I could see he had a very nice torso with perfectly sculpted muscles.

  And I didn’t like it.

  “Thanks for noticing, Addison. Don’t worry, Mad; I’ll keep your woman away from me.”

  “At least someone has my back,” Maddox muttered.

  Addison rolled her eyes and pointed to me.

  Both men turned, and Maddox grinned. “Hey, Olivia. I didn’t see you there.”

  I stood and gave him a hug. “Hey, Maddox.”

  After I stepped back, he pointed to Tommy. “You remember my friend Tommy, right? You met him the first time you came to Brook Creek, and he was also a guest at our wedding.”

  I shot Addison a quick look for not telling me that Tommy would be here. Then, I furrowed my brow as if I were confused and shook my head. “Sorry. Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  3

  Tommy

  Olivia Mayer was lying. She totally remembered who I was, or she wouldn’t have said she didn’t remember me and then left a minute later. If she hadn’t remembered me, she would have stuck around to be introduced. Instead, she had hightailed it out of the room, telling Addison she’d meet her when she was ready.

  “Addison?” Maddox said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you forget to warn Olivia that Tommy would be here?”

  She shrugged. “It might have slipped my mind.”

  “Warn?” I butted in. “Why would you have to warn anyone I was coming?”

  Addison raised her brow and looked at me like I was dense.

  “Dude, you totally insulted her the first and only time you met her,” Maddox said.

  I tried to recall the exact conversation, but apparently, I wasn’t fast enough because Mad Dog filled me in.

  “You told her that her orgasms must suck.”

  I winced. “Oh, yeah. That.” I vaguely recalled saying that to her. “I’ll be back,” I told Mad Dog and Addison. “Actually, I’ll meet you at your place when I’m done with lunch,” I added.

  “Sounds good,” Maddox said.

  “She’s probably around back,” Addison called as I headed for the door.

  I was grateful for the advice because Olivia wasn’t out front, and the nice Lexus that had been parked there when Maddox and I first walked into the building was gone. I walked around to the back of the building to see Olivia standing next to her open trunk.

  “Olivia.”

  She froze and slowly turned around. She crossed her arms over her chest as she bit out the word, “What?”

  I came to a stop about six feet away from her. I wanted her to see my face when I apologized, but I didn’t want to get too close and make her feel intimidated by my size.

  Olivia was a tiny thing. While not all Asian women were short and thin, she was. I was probably over a foot taller than her and twice as wide. I would never want her to feel like she had to fear me.

  “I came back here to tell you I’m sorry. The first time we met, I was incredibly rude to you. I never should have said your orgasms sucked.”

  She flinched.

  “I’m sure you have perfectly nice orgasms,” I added. “Either way, it’s not my place to say.”

  “You’re right; it’s not.” Her words were clipped.

  Okay, so she was still mad.

  I would have preferred if she’d forgiven me because her anger was a turn-on for me. The longer she held the grudge, the more I wanted her.

  And there went my dick. He was totally on board with that idea.

  I clasped my hands in front of my crotch in hopes that I was blocking any view of my erection. If Olivia was mad now, she would be even more pissed if she saw that I was hard.

  “I know there is no excuse for what I said, but I was a weird combination of high on adrenaline and tired from lack of sleep. I was hoping we could start over.”

  She narrowed her brown eyes at me. “I’ll think about it.”

  I clenched my jaw and tried not to say something that would get me in more trouble. I might have been telling the truth about why I’d said those things to Olivia the first time I met her, but I’d left out the part where I was generally a blunt person, no matter what. Would I have said those things if I hadn’t helped Maddox rescue a local townswoman and her son in the middle of the night? The answer was maybe because I couldn’t know for sure that I would have kept my mouth shut.

  I counted to ten and took a deep breath. “Fair enough. You just let me know when you’ve decided.” I nodded and headed next door.

  “Where are you going?” she yelled when I almost reached my door.

  I stopped and turned. “To my place to find some lunch.”

  Her eyes widened. “Aren’t you staying with Addison and Maddox?”

  I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face. “Nope. And if you’re staying in Addison’s old place, it looks like you and I are going to be neighbors.”

  She seemed to think about this and then slowly walked over to me. “Okay.”

  I stared at her, waiting for her to say more.

  “Okay what?”

  “Okay, we can start over.”

  “Just like that, huh?”

  She chuckled and shrugged. “Yeah. Why not? I’m going to be here a week, and I really don’t want to waste the energy being mad at someone.” She tilted her head to the side. “Unless you’re leaving tomorrow or soon after.”

  I laughed. “Sorry, sweetheart, I’m here for a month, and I just arrived two days ago.”

  “I guess it’s a truce then.”

  I held out my hand, and when she shook it, I said, “Truce.”

  She pulled her arm away. “Don’t call me sweetheart though.”

  “Deal.”

  She turned to walk back to her car.

  “But…”

  She paused and turned halfway. “But what?”

  I walked over to her and leaned down next to her ear.

  I waited a beat to see if she would push me away, but when I heard her suck in a breath, I knew I was good to answer her question.

  “But if you ever need someone to slap your ass and pound your pussy, making sure you have an orgasm that doesn’t suck, hit me up. I haven’t had a good, long fuck in a while.” I slapped her butt and walked away, leaving her standing there, mouth hanging open with plenty to think about.

  4

  Olivia

  “Olivia?”

  I spun around as Addison came up behind me.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Standing here, waiting for the shock to wear off.

  I shook my head. “Nothing. I was just talking to Tommy,” I said as I rubbed my bottom.

  Tommy’s slap hadn’t actually hurt, but I could still feel the effects. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  Addison wrung her hands together. “Oh? And what did he have to say?”

  That he wants to have sex with me.

  Holy shit.

  I couldn’t believe he’d said that. So blunt and forward.

  I shook my head to clear it because that was not what Addison was asking about.

  I put my hands on my hips. “Why didn’t you tell me he was going to be here?”

  She smiled awkwardly. “Because then you wouldn’t have come.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  The last time I’d seen him, at the wedding, I had made sure to avoid him all night. Thankfully, Addison and Maddox had had plenty of guests, making it easy for me to stay away from him.

  She put her hands up in front of her and stepped closer. “Look, we don’t have to hang out with the guys at all, if you really don’t want to.”

  That meant Addison would spend less time with her husband, and I wasn’t going to do that to her. Especially when they had two kids together. I didn’t know how that would even work.

  “No, it’s fine. He actually apologized to me.”

  She smi
led. “He did?” She cleared her throat. “I mean, of course he did. Maddox has good friends.”

  I laughed and rolled my eyes. Do good friends hit on their friend’s wife’s friend?

  “But seriously, did you invite me here when you knew Tommy was going to be here?”

  “Well…”

  I had thought she would say no right away. “Why?”

  “Because…” She bit her lip.

  “Because why, Addison?”

  “Because you need to get laid. Remember we talked about this? And I know every guy in town, and none of them are right for you.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “And you think Tommy the Flash is?”

  “It’s just Flash, no the. And he might not be right for you as a boyfriend.” She stepped closer and lowered her voice. “But he’s the perfect rebound guy. He’s the type who can fuck you into a coma and make you forget all about Ray and anything else bothering you. Then, you can go back to Des Moines with a whole new outlook.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “And you think sex is going to do that for me?”

  “No. Great sex is going to do that for you.”

  “And how do you know that Tommy is even capable of having great sex?”

  She smirked. “Because he’s just like Maddox. He’s a former Navy SEAL, so he has total command over his body. He’s confident, and guessing by what he said to you the first time you met him, he’s good at dirty talk.” She whispered, “Don’t tell Maddox, but even I got a little turned on when he said that you needed to be spanked and fucked hard.”

  I swallowed. “Those weren’t his exact words.”

  Addison’s eyes widened, and her face lit up in a grin. “Oh my God, you remember what he said to you.”

  “Of course I remember. I’d never been so insulted in my life.”

  She laughed. “Insulted…and a little curious.” She lifted up a finger. “And don’t you say you weren’t.”

  “Okay. Maybe I was a little curious.” Was and still am.

  Addison wiggled her eyebrows.

  “I said, maybe.”

  Knowing when not to push something, Addison changed the subject. “Come on. I’ll show you around upstairs.”

  She helped me grab my things from my trunk, and we walked up the sturdy but creaky staircase to the apartment above her office.

  She unlocked the dead bolt and handed me the key. “It’s not big, but you won’t be here long.”

  “I remember from when I was here last time.” I grabbed on to the door and shook it to test how sturdy it was. Even with a dead bolt, doors could be broken.

  She set my stuff down by the door. “I left a lot of things here when Maddox and I bought our own place.” She pointed toward the kitchen. “There are dishes in the cupboard, and I put some essentials in the fridge. You’ll probably have to go shopping though.”

  “I’ll do that this afternoon while you’re at work.”

  She pointed to the couch. “I left the couch, but I took my TV. But I assume you have your laptop in case you want to watch anything.”

  “TV? What’s that?” I joked and patted the bag hanging on my shoulder. “My computer is right here. And I’m fine without a television. I barely have time to watch anything other than the news I turn on while I’m getting ready in the morning.”

  “Tell me about it.” She gestured toward the bathroom. “I put clean towels in the bathroom along with the basic toiletries. I figured you’d probably bring a lot of your own stuff.”

  I nodded.

  She turned her attention to the bedroom. “I left my bed and all my bedroom furniture when I moved. Maddox insisted we get a king-size bed, and mine is only a queen. I was going to eventually bring it over for a guest room, but then both boys were born, and we ran out of bedrooms. So, here it stays.” She put her hand on my arm. “I put on fresh sheets this morning.”

  “Thank you.”

  I set my laptop bag down on her kitchen table and turned around. I pointed to the wall behind me. “I don’t remember that window being there.”

  Addison looked. “Oh, I used to have a big bookcase in front of the window because it has a direct line of sight into that room, where Tommy is staying. These buildings were built very close together, so I put the bookcase there when I first moved in because I didn’t want my previous neighbors looking in and catching me naked or something. The bookcase was there so long that I forgot about the window until I moved the bookcase to the new house.” She tapped her chin and said to herself, “Why didn’t I remember that when Maddox moved in? I could have spied on him.”

  “Addison.”

  “What?”

  “You can’t spy on someone even if he is now your husband.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I was kidding.”

  “No, you weren’t.”

  She laughed. “You’re right. I wasn’t.” She walked over to the small pane of glass. “You honestly can’t see much anyway, but you still might want to put up a towel or something.”

  I walked up behind her. I could barely make out furniture in the apartment next door, to the point that I wasn’t even sure what I was looking at. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

  Addison turned around. “I’ll leave, so you can get situated.” She looked at her watch. “We’re grilling out at our house for dinner, so you should have plenty of time to unpack and go to the store.”

  “What time should I come over?”

  “Maddox will probably pick the boys up from day care at five, so around then.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  She put her hand on my arm. “But no earlier, okay?”

  I laughed. “Okay.” I liked being early to everything.

  “I’m serious,” she said with a smile because she knew I was always punctual.

  I put an X over my heart. “I promise.”

  5

  Tommy

  After lunch, I walked over to Maddox and Addison’s place because their town was that small. It took me a good twenty minutes, but it wasn’t worth having Maddox come and pick me up.

  When I got there, I walked around to the backyard and pulled out my earbuds. When Maddox had said he was keeping me busy while I was in town, he’d meant it. His house was old, and while he had already updated a lot of things upstairs, his basement still gave off a dungeon vibe with half of it unfinished. Before we started on the inside though, we were going to make the tiny windows into full-sized ones, so they would bring in more light. We would also make them big enough that someone could crawl out of them if there was a fire.

  Maddox looked up from his work and rested his arm on the shovel he’d just been using. “Hey, Addison told me you apologized to Olivia.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah. It was the right thing to do.”

  I waited for him to add that I had come on to her and canceled out any apology I had given.

  “Thanks. It was going to be a long week if you and Olivia were butting heads the whole time. It makes things easier on Addison and me.”

  Interesting. So, Olivia hadn’t told Addison that I’d offered to have sex with her.

  Or Addison hadn’t told Maddox that.

  Nah. Addison totally would have told her husband. Those two hardly kept anything from each other.

  Which meant I needed to file this information away for later.

  “It’s the least I could do. I was pretty rude to her. I don’t know what came over me.”

  Maddox laughed. “I do.”

  I picked up the other shovel. “Oh, yeah? And what’s that?”

  He wiped off a bead of sweat from his forehead. “You were just being you. You always speak your mind. It’s one of the things I like about you.”

  “Yeah, it worked well when we were active duty.” When we had been out in the field, there hadn’t been time to tiptoe around things. When issues arose, they needed to be dealt with immediately. “But being a civilian now, I might need to reevaluate the things I say.” Maybe my nickname was Flash because I made people disappear by being
so blunt.

  “Nah,” Maddox said. “Now, help me dig, so we can put in the new windows tomorrow.”

  I put in my earbuds, turned on my music, and went to work.

  After a couple hours, Maddox approached me, so I hit pause on my phone and took an earbud out so that I could hear him better.

  “Hey, Addy is going to be home soon, and I have to pick up the boys from day care, so we should probably call it quits.”

  I looked at my watch and furrowed my brow. “It’s only three in the afternoon. Don’t you usually pick the kids up at five or something?”

  “Yes, but I need to shower and also get ready for dinner since everyone is coming over tonight.”

  I still didn’t understand why he needed that much time to get ready. “Do you need any help?”

  “Maybe later, but Addison and I have it handled for right now.”

  I studied my friend. We’d worked together a long time, and I could tell when something was up. “So, you and Addison are going to be making dinner, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what we’re calling sex these days?”

  Maddox shook his head and threw his hands up. “Yes, my wife is coming home a couple hours early, so I can fuck her, okay? You and I have been busy working on the house, she’s been preparing for Olivia’s arrival, and the boys make it really hard to get more than a quickie in.”

  I started laughing. “Dude, you don’t have to justify having sex with your wife to me. If I had a wife”—I was going to add like Addison until Maddox narrowed his eyes, so I left that part off—“I would want to have sex with her, too. I mean, why else have a wife?”

  Maddox snorted. “That’s why you don’t have a wife. They are not your personal sex worker.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Sex worker?”

  “My lovely wife has been keeping me on the up and up and says that I spend too much time in an all-male environment. She said that if I’m going to work in law enforcement, I need to eliminate sexist ideas that many police officers practice. One of those is to stop calling women who work in the sex industry prostitutes and hookers. Sex worker recognizes that that they are workers, and it loses some of the negativity that is associated with the other titles.”